Monday, Secretary Mattis will meet with Minister Sajjan in Washington. When Mattis spoke to Sajjan, it seemed to be the normal love in between allies. The shared relationship and goals was spoken of. There was something missing though. When he spoke to the UK Minister of Defence, there was mention of the Trump Administration's appreciation of their commitment to the 2% of GDP spending target. Not so with Canada. Canada only spends 1% of GDP. Will the push for more spending start to come in this meeting?

commitment to the 2% of GDP spending target. Not so with Canada. Canada only spends 1% of GDP. Will the push for more spending start to come in this meeting?

While I think that target is just plain dumb, I have no problem with increasing our spending on National Defence. The issue I have is we tend to do it very foolishly. Lets not get into the role of being strong armed into just supporting the American Military Industrial Complex. Lets have a buy Canadian - and I mean Canadian program. No more of having foreign owned companies set up branch offices in Canada to farm out a little of our procurements. Canada used to be a world leader in the field. Some of the first mass produced submarines were made in Montreal. During WWII we were a leader in Aerospace. Canada is still doing fairly well in small arms, and not too bad in road/offraod vehicles.

While I think that target is just plain dumb, I have no problem with increasing our spending on National Defence. The issue I have is we tend to do it very foolishly. Lets not get into the role of being strong armed into just supporting the American Military Industrial Complex. Lets have a buy Canadian - and I mean Canadian program. No more of having foreign owned companies set up branch offices in Canada to farm out a little of our procurements. Canada used to be a world leader in the field. Some of the first mass produced submarines were made in Montreal. During WWII we were a leader in Aerospace. Canada is still doing fairly well in small arms, and not too bad in road/offraod vehicles.

That was the idea behind Harper's ship building strategy. There would be a constant series of purchases over many years so we wouldn't have ship builders having to tool up every time we needed new ones, then laying everyone off afterward. It hasn't worked out very well. It would work even less well for aircraft. I don't think we have the necessary size of military to keep a factory busy churning out tanks or armored personnel carriers or even uniforms and boots for the military.

General Mattis appears to be one of the few grown-ups in Trump's cabinet, so I am sure that the meeting will be highly professional.

As for the economic potential of defense spending, it seems to me that many of the things our military units do are also in high demand in non-military applications. For example, detecting and tracking targets in a battlefield seems to me to be expertise that could also be applied to search-and-rescue, border patrol, aerial surveillance, forestry and wildlife services, anti drug smuggling operations, and similar kinds of things that are a lot more significant to Canada than shooting wars are at the moment. Getting troops and supplies into hazardous areas might not be too different from getting aid workers or emergency supplies or medical equipment into disaster areas. And so on. If Canada had domestic industry that specialized in technologies like those, there might be enough non-military market to justify its existence.